Einstein didnt say truth was relative, but that the world was. The question of how to deal with the new situation in modern thought is phenomenology. Psychologically, however, we are not satisfied with the world. Heidegger puts us in a dire situation with the picture he paints. Hegel's absolute knowledge was rejected by him. Knowing all truth has be an aspiration though of religious seekers and philosophers for ever. Personally is see truth, subjectively, as personal or relational. for others it might be more abstract. Have you ever felt you want everything?

Your idol is Wittgenstein obviously, who by the way was a rude man who would run out the room like a little bitch because he didn't have the patience to do philosophy and come back claiming he found a sickness in language itself. His position was not intelligible

Outside the world cannot be pictured but neither can Wittgenstein's arguments. So his views are circular

I don't care to read more of Wittgenstein for now. He said philosophy is word games and claims language proves it. A ridiculous position to hold. Are you a fly or a human?

It's impossible to explain the world without getting into philosophy

Basing it on all that's been said so far about Wittgenstein's sleight of hand. Follow the conversation

Questions about the origin of the universe are not meaningless

Wittgenstein 's syllogism

1) we initially use language to describe the world

2) we still use the same language tools

3) so we can only speak of the world

It's a faulty argument. There is such a thing as more mature thoughts about abstracts things. Doesn't the Tractatus itself speak of the mystical? Why can't we speak more of it? Why take all poetry out of philosophy? If you don't understand a philosophers thoughts, how can you dismiss it based on language?

You just hate philosophy and a search for intellectual wisdom

Russell was a Hegelian in his youth, but chose to be a doubtful atomist latter

What exactly? Who's now playing a word game?

Language is there to express ideas. That's what it does. To many the idea of absolute nothing producing something without there being some action is completely nonsensical. I struggle with it too

Wittgenstein says my questions are meaningless, as you have. They make sense to me, maybe for psychological reasons but not because of semantical mistakes. Wittgenstein read Plato but not Aristotle. Everyone back then knew of the scholastic subtleties. Finally, Russell started this "it's language problem" phenomena is response to Hegel

I think potentiality both exists and doesnt, so something comes from nothing and something at the same time. But yes Banno, I agree there is no causality in the origin of the universe. Potentiality naturally becomes real

The following problems I find meaningful and interesting

1) can something be partially true and partially false? How?

2) can something be both real and unreal?

3) can something be composed of both thought AND matter?

4) can spiritual and material refer to the same thing

I like variety in my garden. I just wish Wittgenstein had had a good conversation with Charles Sanders Peirce

Wittgenstein insists on nominalism because of his horror over Hegel on one side and Catholic scholasticism on the other. Descartes had already pointed out the weakness of the nuances of the "schoolmen" of his day, but on the basis that those matters had no solution for our limited minds. Descartes did not say the thousands of Thomist and Scotian subtleties were meaningless. He said they were unprovable ideas. I find them good for mental training. I love reading Edward Feser, even though I disagree with all his argumentation

Hume tried to make metaphysics NOT make sense, instead of working around doubts and reduction. That's like Wittgenstein. I don't see what lock has to do with this. And Berkeley thought the world was a union of our thoughts with God's thoughts, surely meaningless to Wittgenstein. Psychologism is more what Wittgenstein was after, although he wanted to keep certain logical truths objective

Necessity applies to the phrase "all bachelors are unmarried." It is contingent whether a horse is black or not. Russell said he couldn't fathom how these concepts could be applied to the world at large, but to many people these ideas have meaning. It's impossible to eradicated these thoughts from human thinking by focusing on grammer. Again, Wittgenstein started a hoax

A Kantian fact is phenomena acting almost always in accord with what seems reasonable and orderly. With Humean facts, anything is possible at any time

And what is this logic of language that makes metaphysics meaingless? I havent seen any particular examples. What's a truth that the philosophy of language can prove?

Potentiality moves by spontaneity. Like with particles moving in sinc with no causation. There might be a compatabilism explanation for a physical law behind phenomena, but it goes back thru a finite series of casual motions into the ghostly haze of potentiality

If you say questions such as the "difference between contingency and necessity" are meaningless, you have still formed a concept. It's not pure meditation yet, if that is your ultimate goal

As an aside, studying language really has nothing to do with the philosophy in the language, unless you say W was just doing what John Stuart Mill tried to do.

So Wittgenstein said 1) that the world can be experienced more than the self. However, he also said 2) the sense of the world is outside the world. So which of these applies to younger W and which to the mature dude?

Some people desire to know and understand life. That is their peak moments. Although people turn to religions because of the fundamental mechanics of psychological stress (Freud), economic stress (Marx), and social stress (Durkheim), some just desire to wonder and be satisfied. Day dreaming about philosophy is part of my meditation scheme

It's understood in the doing, the use. — Banno

A world religion book I have said the African religions are like that. Very Heidegarrian. I like the world of ideas though also. There is a box in my garage that says "this box is happy to see you too". A medieval scholar would say it's a joke or a "nice sentiment". A modern philosopher would take it much more seriously. I think that's cool

To give another example, suppose a mother and child are cuddling and both feeling love. The mother says "love", but how does the child know it refers to the feeling and doesn't mean "this will pass"?

From a theoretical POV one person can measure an infinite amount of time to a horizon, and another a finite amount of time (the black hole scenario is one example). — InPitzotl

That's very interesting

How's that sitting? — Banno

What has passed since you posted that? What is it? What substance does it have? Is it an entity? Is it pure potential?

I think time is best understood with intuition, not reason. Children have keen intuition in learning language. They start with no knowledge of words. I've thought much about how you get from knowing not a single word to knowing a language. If I pick up a rag and say "rag", how does the child know he is talking about the rag and not the act of picking up? This kind of logic goes wild in all directions. We can communicate because of intuition, expressed through language

Heidegger would agree with space-time being the fourth dimension. This way there is not three dimensions spatially, but infinite directions going spherically in every direction. The most profound thing someone has said to me on this forum was that there is no difference bewteen infinity and finitude. That idea takes a lot of work. Positivist are ok with that task because it's about bland numbers. More colorful ideas scare them. They call them spiritual. But you can never know exactly what someone else is experiencing, as Wittgenstein even said. You can't know how smart someone is. What is smart for Einstein is different from what is smart for a silver back gorilla. Kant says understand the representations of life with morality, knowing in a sense you are alone but in a very real sense in a world populated with beings. What your opponent truly thinks may be closer to your own than you realize

Gregory's off and running calling B-theory Einstein's theory. Why? Because he wants to use the big guy's name? — InPitzotl

It's the same theory with another name

It is false that "what can be said can be said clearly". Truth doesn't work that way. Things can be implied, hinted at, because they so far hidden, so far. The greatest joy in life, for me, is seeing a truth on the horizon. One you have it you want more. Only the absolute experience of Truth which Hegel wrote of will satisfy me. I don't know what Wittgenstein's goal in life was but to travel the roads of this world

And yet there it is in your OP. Oh well. — Banno

Where?

So... time before time is not a word game...? — Banno

Nope

Again, name one thing the language studies have proven about philosophy..

It's a question of what was there, not what is. — ztaziz

Life, as in it's reality, starts with motion. The world is life. There was nothing before the first motions. There was no origin

in which infinite causes proceed asymptoticly within a limited time. — Banno

Beautiful phrase, but it's still propounds a supertask, which has difficulties

When two people "feel pain", their experiences must be analogies but possibly very different. Same for joy, sorrow, hatred, and humility. We've know this long before language theory and it really is all that theory is trying (so hard) so analyze

There is no conceivable way of truly understanding language. It is too dynamic of a thing. To get to its roots would consist almost entirely of conjecture. — neonspectraltoast

I agree. Can anyone state two definite items of thought that has been proven by language theory? Nothing philosophical certainly. I feel like its a jacuzzi of haze

"The sense of the world must lie outside the world." -wittgenstein

Heidegger and Kant were capable of writing whole books about this. Sartre maybe too. Not so much Wittgenstein

Presentism is A Theory. Eternalism is B Theory. It is easier to reconcile some type of spirituality with the latter. I struggle to reconcile my materialist C theory thoughts with Hegelian idealism. I have to posit two souls in me, one subjective and the other objective

It adds a dimensional aspect of awareness. — Possibility

Exactly. Like Heidegger said. From a purely materialistic perspective time doesn't mean anything. Descartes knew this. He believed in C theory it appears

Positivists? — Banno

A lot of people say on here that language studies can fix philosophical problems. I don't think language studies go far in discovering anything, and certainly nothing about philosophical questions. It's a hoax

at least now you know that time is real. — Banno

"According to the C-theory of time, it is not possible for this Universe to have run in the opposite direction of time, for there is no such thing as ‘the direction of time’ that could be reversed."

That's what I was proposing. B theory is just Einstein's theory, with eternity ruling time. A theory is the time ruling over eternity (Bergson). All these positivists on this forum are voicing Hume's doubt over what force, power, and energy even mean. Physics leads to philosophy

To give more analogy, the disagreement between Christians and Mormoms is partially substantial, partially not. Whether we call the world a creation or an emmanation of God, whether we say God has a spiritual body of not, whether we say the world is contingent or full of God just to a lesser degree than He has,.. all these questions are subjective. I agree to that. But the Mormoms also say God the Son is inferior to God the Father. I think that is a substantial thought, and one among many issues religious people think are true questions, IF one of their religions turns out to be true

Could your perplexity be little more than a crossed words? — Banno

The thought about time being before the "origin" is not a word game. There are substantial thoughts involved. Truth may be insubstantial, but thoughts are real

I'll talk about this later in my posts. — Sam26

If you can talk more about the difference between the younger and latter Wittgenstein, I'd appreciate it. On the religious question, he sounds Zen. A bit too much for me